जो बीत गई सो बात गई

जो बीत गई सो बात गई

जीवन में एक सितारा था
माना वह बेहद प्यारा था
वह डूब गया तो डूब गया
अम्बर के आनन को देखो
कितने इसके तारे टूटे
कितने इसके प्यारे छूटे
जो छूट गए फिर कहाँ मिले
पर बोलो टूटे तारों पर
कब अम्बर शोक मनाता है
जो बीत गई सो बात गई

जीवन में वह था एक कुसुम
थे उसपर नित्य निछावर तुम
वह सूख गया तो सूख गया
मधुवन की छाती को देखो
सूखी कितनी इसकी कलियाँ
मुर्झाई कितनी वल्लरियाँ
जो मुर्झाई फिर कहाँ खिली
पर बोलो सूखे फूलों पर
कब मधुवन शोर मचाता है
जो बीत गई सो बात गई

जीवन में मधु का प्याला था
तुमने तन मन दे डाला था
वह टूट गया तो टूट गया
मदिरालय का आँगन देखो
कितने प्याले हिल जाते हैं
गिर मिट्टी में मिल जाते हैं
जो गिरते हैं कब उठतें हैं
पर बोलो टूटे प्यालों पर
कब मदिरालय पछताता है
जो बीत गई सो बात गई

मृदु मिटटी के हैं बने हुए
मधु घट फूटा ही करते हैं
लघु जीवन लेकर आए हैं
प्याले टूटा ही करते हैं
फिर भी मदिरालय के अन्दर
मधु के घट हैं मधु प्याले हैं
जो मादकता के मारे हैं
वे मधु लूटा ही करते हैं
वह कच्चा पीने वाला है
जिसकी ममता घट प्यालों पर
जो सच्चे मधु से जला हुआ
कब रोता है चिल्लाता है
जो बीत गई सो बात गई।।

If there's a God, then why has He let me go?

Disclaimer: If you hold anything in your life above debate, kindly don't read this post.


In my limited understanding and experience, I have come to believe that there is one art that has no equal in this world- the art of having no opinions. To clarify, this means to treat two conflicting ideas with equal respect and form no opinion. Let them hang in the balance without troubling oneself. To appreciate a good point, nudge the scales a little and go back to the state of wait and watch. To carry out an open-ended self debate. The much fabled Neutral Jing - neither advance nor retreat.


It is pretty obvious that having no opinions on some matters is quite difficult. We are too deep in one of the twin quick-sands of the debating ground. Our personal convictions are too personal to leave behind. So, let me consider the question which has no first order, tangible connection to most of us and yet, the deepest intangible effect by the most circuitous pathways - GOD. It is the benchmark question to gauge the spirit of the debater, the radical inside a new acquaintance. But I write of it out of completely different motivations. To explore those second order, intangible links to the most inexplicable facet of human life.


Before dissecting anything, let me tell you about my faith. I have had my own roller coaster ride. Once upon a time, I was as devout as circumstances would allow. Gradually I switched from the idea of predefined Hindu Gods to the general idea of a Supreme Power. Still, I found my assumption lacking and my faith wavering. I resorted to believing in chance, randomness and mathematical truth as supreme. Then, a quick succession of events led me to question and disbelieve anything that was not verifiable. This translates to deifying evolution and Darwinism. But some philosophical questions still remained. In the hindsight, this was more of a spiritual wanderlust than radical changes in faith. But this doesn't undermine the fact that it was a tumultuous and gratifying journey. Finally, I have found a temporary solution - truce. I am like a child angry with his parents - refusing to listen to them, refusing to even acknowledge their existence. I hope one day this  will end and I will make true peace.


At the very outset, I would like to draw the boundaries. I will assume that survival is the most basic, primal, unalterable human instinct. Consider it the guiding axiom of this dialogue. I will also limit the domain of discussion to God and not wander into Religion. Involving religion involves debating about the best and the worst in human beings, a topic too messy to tackle unless you have sufficient hard evidence. It always ends up being a debate about unverifiable claims - human beings have property X. Some overlap is unavoidable and even required for the sake of debate. Moreover, religion has a very bad track record and defending it against a zealous person is an irrational task. I am not berating religion. I am just saying that it has become convoluted with the baser traits of those who have been shaping it, just like any old institution- caste system, marriage and plenty of others.


However, there is one unifying theme. The typical God of every religion has more or less the same attributes.

• All powerful, All knowing
• Demands unwavering and unflinching loyalty and devotion
• Promises insane rewards probably in this life and definitely in afterlife
• Will ruin and destroy those who do not believe in him (these are the most eloquent ones)

Let us name such an instance a 'textbook' God. Debating about textbook Gods is futile. They can't be even an approximation or minor distortion of the reality. They are stories that have been embellished for centuries and have more myth than divinity. For the sake of arguing, consider an argument adapted from The Brothers Karamazov. Suppose a person of faith X has done nothing but sinned his entire life. Nearing his death, he switches to faith Y and does some nice things, earning him a good name in the books of God(s) of faith Y. What becomes of him in his afterlife? I have never heard of Gods of two different religions having a chat about such a fellow. In fact, I have never heard them talking or even seeing each other at all. If he belongs to the Gods of Y, then this is the easiest way to go to heaven. If he belongs to the Gods of X, the Gods of Y are powerless in comparison. So, then why do they let religion Y exist? Why don't they bring down the vengeance they so often threaten in their sacred books?  This is an old dilemma - comparing infinities. This elegant argument from the deepest gazer into human soul suffices to bring the debate to a dead-end. (Alas!! I started off by saying no opinions. But here I am, under my biases. Maybe I will swing back after hearing an equally good argument from the other side.)


So, let me restrict myself to the concept of a God or the theoretical possibility of a God and its effect on humanity as well as an individual. Rephrase it as 'What would be God like?'.I would also talk of afterlife - heaven, hell, purgatory and the likewise. To complete the sketch, I would talk of the place of God in social design, morality and assorted topics.


Let me start by tracking the evolution of religion. In my understanding, the earliest attempt by humans to comprehend the mysterious phenomena of nature was magic. Think of it as No understanding, Minimal Assumptions. This was man trying to find correlations between his actions and the events around him. Spirits of the dead were all they could think of. Gradually came the nature gods. As the stories grew, a more elaborate constellation of gods emerged. This was the stage of Little Understanding, Great Assumption, No Verification. Slowly came Science, much hindered and persecuted. But it gave results - verifiable results and a framework to understand them. Slowly but surely, science became the dominant paradigm of our age. But religion refuses to die out. Despite whatever goodies science throws at humanity, we refuse to let go of our religious roots. Magic died out as society progressed, now surviving mostly in African tribes. But not religion. The reason behind this merits serious thought. I will come back to it but before that, I want to raise an often raised doubt about debating on God.


Whether one believes in God or not, no one can deny that the topic is inflammatory. It can fire and stir human hearts as few other topics can. Men have done great things in the name of religion, and others have equally diabolical in the same name. But that does not lessen the motivation behind the truly marvelous deeds. Think of what I call the faith of Lincoln. Lincoln took the decision to not to cede to the demands of Southern States and went ahead with abolishing slavery. It plunged America into the Civil War, crippling life and engulfing men. It wasn't a very popular or economically sound decision. But Lincoln believed it was a moral one. He lived in a small house at the outskirts of Washington with just a Bible. Lincoln suffered with severe depression, and yet was able to save America from partition and became their greatest president. I strongly doubt he would have accomplished half as much without his faith. What about Mother Teresa? Robert Schuller? If I prove that there is no God, they will lose their motivation and humanity will suffer. What's bad if a lie makes everybody smile?


God serves as a reference frame in this fast changing world, otherwise governed by the principle of rat race - survival of the fittest. It is this contrast that makes God indispensable. Maybe God is just a personification of our inner moral compass. Personally, I endorse this view. I think everybody has his own personal God. Much like a guardian angel. To accommodate so many Gods, their powers would have to be toned down. However, this slope is slippery and it is better to walk with caution, lest I confuse myself with something eloquent yet meaningless. (An example which fooled me - True Gods must be silent. It's catchy, but stupid. You say it with beaming pride, and end up looking stupid.) Coming back to the topic, I think this is why humanity hasn't been able to let go of its Gods even after advancing to the next level of understanding nature. But in order to decide if the human race can live without the concept of God, it is imperative to answer the following question - what is the relation between God and morality? Will we as a society be less or more moral with no Gods peeking at us from the Heavens? I align with the less moral view. Without a God who sees and judges everybody, the only remaining parameter to base decisions will be survival, an inherently selfish concept. It will be like the Wild West, where the Man With No Name can come to your town and kill you just out of fancy. 


Living in communities and the ensuing Division of Labor are the basic tenets of human progress. So, survival needs men to group together. Take example of a small primitive group. But as soon as a group is formed, comrades become competitors. Now, survival dictates them to outfox others to grow - to get the better partner, to get more resources. So, people resort to hitting below the belt - to gain that extra edge. However, if somebody tamper too much, there are two possibilities. If they are too numerous, the community will shatter else the miscreants will be thrown out . Either way, they will be forced to go alone against this big, bad world. And they definitely don't want that. So, they need to strike a balance between their greed and the general good. Here is where religion comes into picture.






I guess this post has dragged on for too long. But in order to be fair to the mammoth topic I have chose, much remains to be said-particularly on the social design theme. So, I have split this post into two. Wait for the next one. :))


PS: Most of the ideas presented here are a result of discussions with my friend, Jitin Gupta.

From the Book Shelf

 Robert Jordan pushed the cup toward him. It was a milky yellow now with the water and he hoped the gypsy would not take more than a swallow. There was very little of it left and one cup of it took the place of the evening papers, of all the old evening cafes, of all chestnut trees that would be in bloom now in this month, of the great slow horses of the outer boulevards, of bookshops, of kiosks, and of galleries, of the Parc Montsouris, of the Stade Buffalo, and of the Butte Chaumont, of The Guarantee Trust Company and the Ile de la Cite, of Foyot's old hotel, and of being able to read and relax in the evening; of all things he had enjoyed and forgotten and that came back to him when he tasted that opaque, bitter, tongue-numbing, brain-warming, stomach-warming, idea-changing liquid alchemy. 

                                                                                  - Ernst Hemingway, For Whom The Bell Tolls

Four Familiar Walls

/*The is a draft version..Will put up a 'refined' version with better rhyming and all that soon*/
Studies, books, wanderings and even home, sweet home
Dazzle for a while; slow but sure, their charm does fade
They may have a thousand hues and tinges, but still finite
Once they are exhausted, never will you see a new shade

Who needs such fickle indulgences, which sane man at all?
I have found my pastime, within these four familiar walls
It is a place that can bear well the brunt of my restless mind
I know there is something inside,so vague that time can't erode

Accomplish all that the world has to offer, dreams and delights

And all you get - a stream of hollow, indifferent congratulations
Befall the grim, cold days of despair, crushing you underneath
And all you get - a couple of overacted, patronizing consolations

Who needs such two-faced impostors, which sane man at all ?
I have finally found a true friend, within these four familiar walls
They don't speak, perhaps because they don't want to fake it
But their truthful silence, deepens the depth of every occasion

Run after something, and run again after something brighter
Jobs, promotions, girls, - the something doesn't really matter


Who needs such circular pursuits, which sane man at all?
I have jumped to the end, within these four familiar walls



                                                                                                                                                                  

Answers change

In my first post, I mentioned a novice blogger's dilemma- how to write what you like so that others like it. The more I thought of it, the more familiar it sounded. Extra-currics or GPA, job satisfaction or package, with family in India or with better opportunities abroad , children or career? All of these are instances of a very fundamental problem. Satisfaction and ambition clash and middle ground is hard to find.

To be honest, I don't know what will I do when offered such a choice. Most of these choices are hard to make because we have to juggle with multiple factors - individual motivations, family, societal norms, risk involved, things at stake and a few customized constraints for each problem. But as is the case with many hard problems, special instances are solvable while the general setting is intractable. So, I thought of restricting the domain of the dilemma to a special case - what if the decision concerns only ME.

This reminds me of some childhood stories. This is a couplet I remember from my school days

नानापुराणनिगमागमसम्मतं यद  

रामायणे निगदितं क्वचिदन्यतो अपि  

स्वान्तःसुखाय तुलसी रघुनाथगाथाभाषानिबंधम.....

  This is the preface (मंगलाचरण) from Ramacharitramanas(रामचरित्रमानस). Roughly translated, it means that "Numerous other people have also written their own Ramayans in agreement with numerous standard authorities. Tulsi(the author) is still binding the legend of Rama to words for the happiness of his own self......." 

 It is common among Indian authors to pray for fame and popularity in their prefaces. In fact, almost everybody writes for fame. Then why is an author of the highest caliber denouncing even acknowledgement, let aside fame and immortality ? Maybe because he already has his reward. The knowledge that he has made an indelible mark. This is the reason why grown ups head bang like crazy in a rock concert. This is why rockstars are cool not billionaires.

And as I go on, I realize that some things are really not that complicated as we conjure them to be in our minds. Sometimes it is good to do something stupid if it makes us happy. I think I'll take that risk.

This train of thoughts that had started at questions ends, as usual, at some radically different yet related ones, passing through some answers in between.What if write about some not so popular things that I absolutely love ? What if I write about manga and graphic novels - Lone Wolf and the Cub, Naruto, Bleach, Ramayana 3392 A.D. ? They are some of the most profound things I have read. But I have a question - suppose you have never heard of them. Will you give them a try if I insist? implore? request? beg? force?  My friends find it hard to believe that these childish pages can have so much intellectual depth. Yet they like my status messages from these manga. And everybody likes the dark, gory, gruesome movies based on manga and graphic novels. (Watchmen, Sin City, 300, V for Vendetta, Dark Knight to name a few) Same goes for Hermann Hesse,

I guess I know the answer. That will make me happy and either bore you or spark your interest in a completely new direction. My apologies in advance, but without them, my expressions are incomplete.

PS: If you haven't noticed, I sound a bit odd .Wading into algorithms considerably alters your vocabulary, especially about what is hard and what is easy (Tractable, intractable. instances, constraints). 

• Even the basic idea is borrowed from that field(Valiant-Vazirani Theorem). It explores whether a computationally hard problem is so tough because it has multiple possible solutions to choose from or because each single solution is hard to find. It doesn't give a definite answer. But the answer is most likely the pessimistic one, unless some miracle happens. 

• Neglect some spelling mistakes in the Sanskrit part. This is as good as I can do with Google Hindi.

Some Gems from Khalil Gibran

I have just started reading Khalil Gibran's Greatest Works. Everybody knows about 'The Prophet'. But his other works are equally good.He is the third most widely read poet in history - after Shakespeare and Lao-Tzu.(+ other standard wiki stuff..Spare both of us the pain and look up there if you want to).Too much for an unschooled Lebanese immigrant?? A couple of pages were enough to convince me he deserves this stature. His work blurs the lines between prose and poetry.They sum up life's truths - from the humble ones to the heroic with enchanting beauty.As I haven't written anything worthwhile in the last six months or so,why not give a highlight of his work. Here we go.  

• We often borrow from our tomorrows to pay the debt of our yesterdays.
• Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from the truth. 
• There is a space between man's imagination and man's achievement that may only be traversed by his longing. 
• If all they say of good and evil were true, then my life is but one long crime.
• Inspiration will always sing.Inspiration will never explain.
• Dig anywhere in the earth and you will find a treasure. Only you must dig with the faith of a peasant.
• When two women talk,they say nothing.. When one woman speaks,she reveals all of life.
• Strange that we all defend our wrongs with more vigor than our rights. 
• Half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it so that the other half may reach you.
• Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.
• Paradise is there, behind that door, in the next room. But I have lost the key..Perhaps I have only mislaid it.
• Strange that creatures without backbones have the hardest shells.
• But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.

The Nerdy Nerve I: Cloud Computing

I have been dabbling into random technical stuff for a while now.(Guess this is what internship does to you when you take it seriously).And what use is dabbling without sweet babbling.Soooo, AUTOBOTS LET'S ROLL..

Cloud is the new buzzword of the IT industry.Everything big happens 'in the cloud'.To get things started, cloud computing is treating computing power as a commodity rather than a computer itself. Lease and release computing resources and pay as you use,somewhat like electricity. So, instead of installing a dozen new computers,you talk of getting the computing ability of a dozen computers.

Cloud Computing is not much of a technological breakthrough.It is more of a paradigm, a model. The concept is pretty much obvious and has been lingering around for a while.It is just another idea whose time has (finally) come.(The word "cloud" became a catchphrase after Google CEO Eric Schimdt used it) In my understanding, it is taking division of labor to the extreme.Just like you let the pro guys design your OS, let them do your computing as well.Simple economy of scale and specialization argument at the first glance.

The beauty and power of the model is obvious once you look at it from the consumer side..You have a new, BIG idea(or such is your conceited belief).You do the obvious and a start-up is born.But you never know whether the users will crown you or crucify you.You may be the next Twitter.(Twitter had just 50 odd employees when it stormed the net. Now it has 140 and isn't taking any more.These guys do have a thing for 140!!(If you don't 'tweet',140 is the word limit for a 'tweet')) You may be just one of the daily casualties of the internet - gone without a trace.Success and failure- both grow exponentially in cyberspace.So,here's your first headache - how many computers do you buy?? Go for the overkill ?? Play it safe and stunt your adventure?? Enter cloud computing as a knight in shining armor.Take as much computing power as you want and pay as you go. And you are really on cloud nine.And even when you survive and stabilize,no maintenance and operational overheads, no fear of crashes and failures.The IT equivalent of 'single window policy'.

The next obvious question - what does the service provider gain? A little bit of history will reveal the answer.(In CS, 90s is history and 80s is Stone Age) No one valued cloud computing in the 90s.Simple reason - the 'dot-com bubble'-the Midas touch of the .com prefix. People were too busy creating Google and Yahoo(It's not that straight.There were a couple of other factors too) When the bubble burst, there were a lot of computers to spare.Computers rarely slog at their peak ability. Average figures may be as dismal as 10% of the peak.(Finally,something in common with humans) So, a lot of computing capacity goes untapped.This led to the basic mantra of cloud computing.

Lot of lazy,underused computers + good business acumen    = lease their computing ability + mint quick money

This is roughly what happened with Amazon.So, they started EC2(Elastic Compute Cloud).And it created shock waves.A test user for the trial version refused to sell his opportunity for $10,000. That's some fanatic frenzy man!! And since then, Google,IBM,Microsoft and almost all leading universities have joined the bandwagon.

The whole tale is a bit too long. So, let me call it a day. Some parting words---Why wasn't it there before if it is so obvious?? There are a few enabling factors like virtualization and pervasiveness of the net. More on it in the next post. Also look out for description of various architecture levels, security issues, criticisms and the power of platforms and frameworks in the next post.(It will be a bit technical.Can't help it)

In the technical world, only time and/or geniuses can tell a paradigm from a fad.Once it was believed that a computer will overtake a man's intelligence by the 70s and nuclear powered home appliances would see the dawn of the day in the 20th century.Too fired up by science fiction,eh?? Will Cloud Computing see clear skies??Fingers crossed..

PS: If you have read attentively,there will be a sequel post soon...If you got this far,you must be really interested in Cloud Computing.If you want to read more- go for Above The Clouds:A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing and Cloud computing: state-of-the-art and research challenges by some Waterloo guys.